Twenty years have passed since the release of the first titles in the Pokémon series, which has sold over 200 million units worldwide. We are preparing to bring you the next titles in this series, Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon, launching in winter 2016 (holiday 2016 in the U.S. and late 2016 in Europe). I just mentioned that the Virtual Console Pokémon titles have been selling well, and excitement for Pokémon has been building, especially in North America, Nintendo's largest market. We aim to use this momentum to drive the launch of these new titles by making this one of our top priority titles for the fiscal year ending March 2017 and maximizing sales worldwide.

Still a ways behind Mario but still by far the second highest selling "Nintendo" series! btw Does this hint at Moon/Sun not having a simultaneous worldwide release or am I reading it wrong?

Worldwide, the four Virtual Console titles – Pokémon Red, Green, Blue and Pikachu – have been downloaded more than 1.5 million times. More than half of these downloads came from the American market. Since the start of the calendar year, Pokémon has been the subject of much attention in America, and sales are showing a favorable trend. Although these are downloadable software titles, download codes sold through retail stores have been a high proportion of sales in Japan. We believe that we have successfully created a chance to appeal to the nostalgia of consumers who played these titles when they first came out.

Hopefully the "over half of these downloads came from America" part isn't lost on Game Freak. A guy can dream.

I thought Pokémon had surpassed Mario in total sales already. I remember reading about it a year or two ago. Maybe there are subtleties involved with whether you count spin-off titles or not, or whether you're talking money exchanged vs. cartridges moved. Or maybe I was misinformed.

Hopefully the "over half of these downloads came from America" part isn't lost on Game Freak. A guy can dream.

I thought Pokémon had surpassed Mario in total sales already. I remember reading about it a year or two ago. Maybe there are subtleties involved with whether you count spin-off titles or not, or whether you're talking money exchanged vs. cartridges moved. Or maybe I was misinformed.

Spinoffs are counted for PKMN so I imagine they would be for Mario to. NSMB, NSMBW & MKW together account for over 90 million games sold so I'd say its a safe bet Mario's still >>>>> PKMN. It spinoffs regularly sell better than PKMN spinoffs an the main games always do rather well for themselves.

After checking with actual figures (quick search on google shopping, with p+p ignored), it turns out that Super Mario 3D Land (which iirc came out with the 3DS) is about 35 quid. Compared with Pokemon Y, which from the same retailer is 33 quid. Pokemon's lost Ł7 in value in just over two years, while Mario's lost Ł5 in just over four.

After checking with actual figures (quick search on google shopping, with p+p ignored), it turns out that Super Mario 3D Land (which iirc came out with the 3DS) is about 35 quid. Compared with Pokemon Y, which from the same retailer is 33 quid. Pokemon's lost Ł7 in value in just over two years, while Mario's lost Ł5 in just over four.

That's fine. In America, that same Mario game is $30 at Wal-Mart while XY is still $40.

In other $$$ news, TPCi made $2.1 Billion in retail sales (games, tcg, dvds, toys, clothing, etc.) in 2015. Despite there being no new main games last year, thats up abit over 2014 which itself was up from 2013. This 20 year old fad keeps on givin'!